The Doors' 'The End' final salute for judge

Robert Jacon hits retirement age, closes the door on judicial career

Updated 7:49 am, Thursday, December 27, 2012

Judge Robert Jacon on the bench at the Rensselaer County Courthouse in Troy, N.Y. Dec. 20, 2012. Jacon will serve his last day on the bench before mandatory retirement tomorrow. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Judge Robert Jacon on the bench at the Rensselaer County Courthouse...

Judge Robert Jacon on the bench at the Rensselaer County Courthouse in Troy, N.Y. Dec. 20, 2012. Jacon will serve his last day on the bench before mandatory retirement tomorrow. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Judge Robert Jacon on the bench at the Rensselaer County Courthouse...

The judge, who was elected to the bench in 2006 and reached the mandatory retirement of 70 this year, wore his black robe for the last time on Friday.

After a full calendar of sentencings, conferences with attorneys, an adoption and taking a plea in a drug case, Jacon took out his smartphone, held it up to the courtroom microphone and pushed a button. Out came one of the most recognizable Doors tunes, "The End," to the amusement of lawyers and court personnel.

"My philosophy has been to try as much as possible to help people who are at the worst time of their lives," Jacon said later, in his office. It was nearly bare of furnishings to make way for Debra Young, the new Rensselaer County judge and first woman to hold the position.

"I did not want to go. I would have preferred to see out my term until 2016," he said.

Jacon did not play all of the nearly 12-minute Doors opus but sometimes his lecturing and scolding of defendants, particularly the young, lasted nearly that long.

Jacon has chided drunken drivers, drug dealers, thieves and killers. He's also offered words of encouragement to defendants who are trying to fix their lives.

"You have to learn to read people as they come before you," Jacon said. "If they made an attempt to dress well and are cooperative and look you in the eye, you know maybe you can help them. If they come in with a cocky swagger, well ..."

Nothing compared to the stern rebukes Jacon doled out to five Troy High School students for beating two Catholic Central High teens at an underage drinking party in the summer of 2011 in Elmwood Cemetery.

The teens, many with their parents looking on, stood individually before Jacon at court appearances between October and December 2011 with heads bowed and hands clasped in front of them, enduring withering lectures. Sometimes they looked up, thinking Jacon was finished, only to find out he was just getting started.

One teen, asked if he had quit smoking pot, answered, "about a week ago."

"I want you to knock off this stuff,'' Jacon said, his voice rising. "If you don't, I am going to put an ankle bracelet on you and it won't look like something you'll see in Vogue magazine."

Overwhelmingly, Jacon said, people are breaking the law because of drug and alcohol abuse.

"It's all we do here anymore is deal with addictions," he said. "I worked at trying to help people with alcohol problems because they have a tough time kicking that. As long as there was not a serious injury or fatality, I tried to get people into rehab."

Jacon began a practice of allowing some defendants before him on alcohol charges to serve their time in Drug Court, an alternative to sentencing that provides monitoring and counseling.

It was a rare move in the Capital Region: Most counties that have Drug Courts only allow drug offenders to attend.

Jacon was also noted for allowing jurors in some cases to ask questions of witnesses on the stand. In those few cases, at the end of the prosecution and defense inquiries of a witness, Jacon allowed jurors to send him written questions. Those were reviewed by the judge and attorneys before being asked of the witnesses.

His scariest case, Jacon said, was the flawed prosecution of Terrence Battiste and Bryan Berry for the brutal January 2002 killings of Arica Lynn Schneider and Samuel "Frost" Holley at their Brunswick Road apartment. Battiste and Berry were indicted on first-degree murder charges in 2007 but in July 2010, DNA at the scene was found to match another man and the pair were cleared of all charges.

"We were literally just hours from picking a jury," Jacon said. "We came close to sending two innocent men away for the rest of their lives. That made me sit up and take notice."

In 2011, Michael Mosley was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison.

For the future, Jacon plans to pick up some work in Rensselaer County Family Court and is considering a history teaching position at Adirondack Community College.

"I have a master's degree in Colonial and 19th-century American history," Jacon said.